OK, that's at least partly right but you forgot to tell me what to
call the device when creating the label for filesystems that support
it - or what name to use for access to the raw device for operations
like image copies and addition/removal from raid arrays. The
underlying problem can't be solved at the filesystem layer.

Try cat /etc/mtab. The device being used for the particular label is
clearly shown after its mounted, even when auto mounted by label in
/etc/fstab. I fail to see what is so hidden here. When the device is
connected to the machine its also identified in log messages as to which
device node it is assigned.

Am I not making it clear that I want to be able to add and move disks
that may or may not have a linux filesystem on them? You know, things
that a unix-like operating system is supposed to let you do in some
deterministic manner. I want the disks to work in dual-boot scenarios
with earlier/later versions of linux. I want to be able to duplicate
disks by copying the raw device or even raid-mirroring then failing and
removing the device.

No, Fedora is about being on the bleeding edge and creating a system
where you don't *need* to migrate configuration files because the files
will be correct if they are using stable identifiers for devices.

I haven't found that to be the case. And I don't see any reason for
today's experimental change to end up being the one that sticks.

Anaconda should have handled changing your configuration change in
/etc/fstab for you at install if all your partitions were labeled.

When does anaconda run? I want to be able to install an OS, then add
disks or move them. Right now a machine by my desktop has 2 scsi and 8
sata drives in hot-swap bays plus an assortment of pluggable firewire
and USB external drives, and only the scsi pair were installed when
anaconda ran. I'd much, much prefer that the raw devices for the
swappable bays always had fixed device names for the drive inserted by
position regardless of insertion order but I realize that's not likely
to happen, so I'll settle for a reasonable description of how to figure
out the right name for a newly inserted drive with the understanding
that it may not have a filesystem lable and I may not want to mount it.
At the moment, the most likely thing I'd want to do is add a partition
from a newly inserted disk to an existing md array, but at some point in
the setup (and not while anaconda is running...) it is necessary to
partition and build the arrays out of a bunch of disks that mostly look
the same. Is fedora suitable for jobs like this?

> If

they aren't all labeled this doesn't happen, which is a short-coming of
anaconda in that it will not apply labels to FAT32 or NTFS disks that do
not have them (and maybe other filesystems). There are also bugs
against anaconda about this and I think a number of them are closed
rawhide so it should be better now.

Anaconda isn't the solution unless I can run it anytime new
unpartitioned devices are added or if I want something on the device
other than a typical file system.